


Save a dragon, ride a dragon trainer

by queen_of_OTPs



Series: Soulmate meet-ups! [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 10:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12252723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_of_OTPs/pseuds/queen_of_OTPs
Summary: What if soulmates had horrible weird words for each other?





	Save a dragon, ride a dragon trainer

After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had felt lost. All his life had been leading up to the one moment, kill or be killed, and he had come out alive. 

 

Harry hadn’t been planning on it. 

 

When he made it out alive and realized that he had an entire life to live, Harry made a few changes. He went to Gringotts to settle and his estates and claim his lordships, taking up the title of Lord Potter-Black. He broke up with Ginny, which caused a rift with a good bit of the Weasley family. How was he supposed to know Ginny had been planning on being Mrs. Harry Potter since she was a baby? 

 

Harry stayed in Grimmauld Place long enough for him to purchase three house elves to work under Kreacher to repair the place and bring faith back to the Black family name. They were eager, and Harry soon had a lively place. 

 

The Weasley clan - mostly Molly, Ginny, and Ron - were getting annoying. They sent letters and desperate pleas to try to get Harry to hear them out and get back with Ginny. 

 

Harry declined every offer. 

 

He had gotten into a relationship with Ginny because her soulmate, Oliver Wood, was too busy to settle down with her with his career in professional Quidditch. The man hadn’t expressed desire for Ginny, so Harry had gone in for the kill and ignored his soul mark. 

 

The words were the first words that his soulmate would say to him, curling around his forearm in scratchy letters that spoke of rushed writing, but something about the way the letters looped together was endearing. 

 

**You know, I had always assumed you would be talking about my cock when you said that.**

 

It wasn’t the most romantic of marks, certainly not the most beautiful. Neville’s sounded like poetry, the looping ‘ _ Your soul reminds me of the sun, little lion-heart’  _ scrawled on Neville’s bare arm.

 

Harry wore a leather cuff over his mark. He had been punished relentlessly when it had come in, his uncle screaming about faggots all the while. It hadn’t been seen by anyone else since. 

 

Now that he had survived the Big Bad that had been supposed to kill him, but had lost so many others, Harry decided to leave. 

 

Andromeda was fine with caring for Teddy while Harry found himself so long as Harry promised to drop everything and come home if Teddy needed him. Harry had agreed immediately and left the next day. 

 

He walked out of Grimmauld in the muggy August air with a backpack on his back, wand on his arm, and hope in his heart for the first time that he could remember. 

 

He told Hermione what he was doing, and she suggested a few places for him to stop before he went. 

 

Harry had invested in a good pair of hiking shoes, and put them to good use. He decided to backpack across Europe. It was nothing compared to the horcrux hunts. His life was easy and simple when he lived out of the pack on his back. 

 

He stopped in big cities and tiny villages alike, seeking out magic users and learning new things. 

 

He started in Portugal and made his way up and down the continent, learning new languages and cultures as he went. 

 

For three days he stayed with a woman in Spain that taught him how to fight with knives and a sword, and he carried the blades she gave him with him always. After the woman in Spain came a series of families in France. 

 

One person was a handsome man that owned a Preserve for magical creatures, but he specialized in the aquatic species. He taught Harry how to make love. 

 

Harry stayed with a werewolf pack for three months in France, learning to hunt like a predator. It made the long treks between civilization easier. He found his animagus form in those three months too, after seeing the wolves run through the moon with their wolf in harmony without wolvesbane. He found that his animagus form, a martial eagle, it was easy to fly in the clouds and cover long distances. 

 

Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland went much the same. Alternating between staying in the forest, big cities, and small villages, learning new tongues and skills. 

 

He picked up healing magic from a small convent in Italy, and he even learned the art of wandless and nonverbal magics in Slovenia. 

 

For four years, Harry trekked across Europe. He was nourished and got plenty of sun and ended up hitting a final growth spurt, standing at six foot when he was finished. His constant life outdoors and training in swordplay helped him pack on muscle, and soon he was a fit twenty one year old that attracted looks wherever he went. 

 

Harry let his hair grow out, but kept it sheared at his shoulders. He kept it in a braid or tied in a bun most days, and he enjoyed the way the Black genes seemed to take control and curl his hair when it was long. 

 

After a long winter spent holed up with a coven of Vampires in the Ukraine, Harry moved on to Romania. 

 

He encountered many beautiful sights on his journey, but nothing compared to the sheer wild beauty of a dragon. Harry hadn’t realized he had wandered onto the Romanian dragon preserve, but he realized it when he had been setting up his tent and singing a song he had learned from the clan of other parselmouths in Bosnia. He hadn’t realized the song was an ancient call for dragons. 

 

Of course it was too late when a massive Antipodean Opaleye lumbered to his camp and began to sing with him in the tongue of serpents. He hadn’t seen the dragon handlers hurrying after the Opaleye that had broken from her enclosure, but when the song was finished and the large dragon was staring down at him with those blank iridescent eyes, Harry had shaken his head. 

 

“Merlin, that thing is huge!”

 

There were chuckles from his right and Harry looked startled to see a group of three people, all dressed in dragonhide and some coated in a liberal amount of scars, staring between him and the Opaleye. 

 

Then, the one in the front spoke. It was too dark to see more detail than his  _ huge  _ biceps and the scars that patterned his flesh, and the long hair tied into a low ponytail. 

 

“You know, I had always assumed you would be talking about my cock when you said that,” the man said, and Harry gaped. 

 

“You - I - we -,” he stuttered. Harry moved to take the leather cuff off of his wrist and walk over to the handler that had spoken, showing the messy scrawl on his wrist. 

 

The handler, in turn, had tugged his own leather cuff off and shown Harry’s neat writing in tiny capital letters.

 

Harry grinned and stuck out his hand, “good to meet you, soul mate.”

 

The man laughed, bright and happy, and took Harry’s hand and shook it firmly. Harry realized that the callouses on the man’s hand were warm and dry, and all of a sudden Harry could only think about those hands swiping along his skin. 

 

“I, uh,” he said, mouth suddenly dry. “I’m Harry. Harry Potter-Black.”

 

There was a faint choking sound behind the handler, one of his friends likely surprised, but the man in front of him stayed calm. “Good to finally meet you, Harry. My name’s Charlie. Charlie Weasley.”

 

“Oh, Merlin,” Harry breathed, “you… I think the fates have it out for me.”

 

Charlie rose a brow, “why’s that?”

 

Harry sighed heavily, “me and your sister kinda dated for a while. Not really. It was more ‘I’m probably going to die and you’re not half bad, let’s go play a seeker’s game’ kind of thing, but… I broke up with her and now most of your family hates me,” he blurted. 

 

Charlie laughed. Honest to god, uncontrollable laughing. 

 

Harry huffed, “oh, shut up you. I’m really worried that your family will be all mad on your account!”

 

Charlie smiled and stood up, reaching out a broad palm to cup Harry’s cheek. He had shaved that morning in a river with the blade of one of his daggers. “Harry. My family’s been mad with me since I decided to go into magizoology instead of a ‘real career’. What’s one more?”

 

Harry nodded slowly, letting a grin spread across his lips. “Alright. Well. Who am I to stop you?”

 

Charlie only grinned and stepped closer to press their lips together. 

 

The other handlers whistled and whooped, but led the Opaleye back to her enclosure where her eggs were. 

 

Charlie offered Harry a place on the reserve, saying they could use a parselmouth on the reserve to translate for the dragons. 

 

Harry had only winked and said, “you’ve got a lot more uses for my mouth.”

 

They lived on the reserve for another year and a half before Harry had to return to Britain for Teddy. Andromeda got sick and couldn’t care for him, and Harry brought the young metamorphagus to Romania. 

 

The three misfits settled together, and they all were rather happy with their life. Surrounded by dragons and odd people coming to visit Harry - werewolves, vampires, fae, and the occasional old witch he had made friends with on his journey all dropped by - they lived happily. 


End file.
